Abstract: The German scholar Mommsen was the main organizer of the “Großwissenschaft” (big science) of the 19th century philology. In the proposal “On planning and implementing a Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum”, he pointed out that the success of the Corpus depends not only on whether all the inscriptions can be compiled into the Corpus in a proper way for the convenience of use, but also on whether it can be used for the research of the future inscription editors and epigraphers. He organized interdisciplinary cooperation among scholars from different countries, critically appraised the works of the predecessors and improved the method of arranging inscriptions. He planned to arrange the inscriptions through the systematic and topographical method and emphasized the advantages of the topographical method in scientific index.

Key words:

philology, Latin inscriptions, big science, Mommsen, digital humanities